Behind Masks
by cousinswar
Summary: TF:PRIME. Optimus doesn't tend to get himself hurt very often. When he does – those are the days Ratchet loses sleep over, and for good reason.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Behind Masks

**Rating:** M  
**Universe:** TF:Prime [AU]  
**Characters/Pairings:** Ratchet/Optimus Prime, Team Prime ensemble  
**Content Advisory:** Gore/body horror, medical procedures, possible smut in future chapters

**Summary:** Optimus doesn't tend to get himself hurt very often. When he does – those are the days Ratchet loses sleep over, and for good reason.

A gift/fic exchange for MlleMusketeer, originally posted on my AO3 account.

There was a wildlife doco on TV. It was horrifying in a very special way. I got inspired. …perhaps a little too much so; the fic kind of expanded enough that I had to split it into chapters if I wanted to have any chance of posting it before about, oh, halfway through next year? [It always seems to get quite wordy whenever I write Ratchet…] I have said it before and I will say it again: sometimes I'm incapable of writing short.

* * *

BEHIND MASKS

...

There were three little words Ratchet hoped, to the bottom of his cynical wartorn spark, that he'd never have to hear again as long as he lived.

He could count the number of times he'd heard them on the fingers of both hands and still have some left over. For that he was grateful, although even one would have been too many.

Static crackled over the line, lancing painfully through Ratchet's auditory center. Arcee's voice shrilled beneath it, cutting through the noise of bombs and gun blasts in the distance.

"Ratchet, we need a ground bridge now! _Optimus is down!_"

She relayed a set of coordinates twelve hundred yards to the south of the point they'd arrived by, the databurst patchy with urgency. Ratchet programmed them in and wrenched the bridge control open. The boiling green vortex spun up and out, swallowing the entryway.

Five life signals in northern Canada blinked out of existence on Ratchet's screen. They reappeared within the main hangar of Autobot Outpost Omega One, the fifth flickering rapidly.

Ratchet shut the bridge down and leapt forward to help.

Smokescreen and Arcee were the first to emerge from the entry gate. The former's white paintjob was streaked with black char. It was less noticeable on Arcee's dark blue and black, but as she hurried out of Ratchet's way his medical protocols made note of the ragged-edged slices rent through her upper dorsal plating, the broken and dangling winglet on her left side.

Bumblebee was entirely unharmed, the only black on his plating his paint. He warbled a quick sitrep to Ratchet: _Vehicons, Insecticons and lots of them, energon out of our reach! Optimus hurt, badly!_

The gate hummed as it spat out the final two, a lick of greenish energy washing over their shoulders before it vanished.

Bulkhead edged forward, taking most of Optimus' weight on his shoulders.

Optimus was walking under his own power – always a good sign – but his steps were stilted, stumbling. He had one arm wrapped around Bulkhead's back and was leaning heavily on the Wrecker; Ratchet glanced down and the leg on that side was resting at an odd angle, the knee joint twisted and sparking. Lower down, panels had been torn away from his shin, his leg mechanisms laid bare down to the protoform and even to the struts in places. His field was taut, blooms of incandescent pain escaping his tightly-wound control. The other arm he'd raised, blocking most of his head and neck from view. Glowing blue energon dripped in rivulets down his chassis.

That meant a major fuel line rupture. Ratchet stepped forward, easing himself under Optimus' other arm and taking a little more of his weight off that damaged leg. Walking on a wound like that would only make it worse; if the struts were compromised in any way he could be looking at a self-inflicted break.

Base protocols looped Optimus' free arm around Ratchet's shoulders. There was an empty moment – Ratchet knew _something_ was missing before he'd realised what it was. Optimus' systems graunched. An odd gurgle followed, and something wet and squishy dripped down the side of Ratchet's cheek.

All the willpower in the world couldn't have stopped him. He looked up.

The lower half of Optimus' face was a dripping, sparking ruin. His left cheek vent had been torn in half and the right was missing entirely; something had ripped across and upwards through his mouth in the world's ghastliest Glasgow Grin, just missing his right audial as it exited below the lower edge of his orbital socket. His lower jaw hung open, dislocated at the left and obliterated at the right, remaining attached to his helm only by a few threads of energon-soaked protoform and a couple of inner neck cables. His dente were smashed, his glossa split open and hanging by a thread. Ratchet could see right into his oral cavity, all the way back to his fuel intake valve.

Optimus' optics glowed dully, focused on a point somewhere above Ratchet's shoulder. They blinked, slower than he liked. The Prime gave another weak, staticky gurgle. There was energon and oral fluid dripping into what was left of his vents, slowly drowning his internal fans. That was what the noise was – a cough.

Ratchet found his voice.

"Arcee, Bumblebee – get me my bandsaw, the nanite gel and the spot welder. Smokescreen, hot water. All humans, up to the mezzanine. _Now!_" To Bulkhead he added, "Help me get him sitting down – not prone, keep his torso upright, yes, like that. Lean him forward, hold his forehelm and tip his head further forward, let the fluids drain."

They came out a mixed dark purple, dirty with oils. It dripped down the ragged line of his lips, pooling on the floor between his legs. He had to be in absolute agony, and yet he still kept his field – mostly – under control, did not make a single sound.

Bumblebee arrived at the double, welder and bandsaw in his arms. His optics went impossibly wide, his field flaring pain/sympathy/worry – _will he be all right?_

Ratchet didn't have an answer to that. He took the tools, wordlessly.

The damage didn't stop at Optimus' face. A shallower slice had carved a deep ravine down the column of his neck, deep enough to sever both the main energon conduit and the sensory hardware track leading up into his helm; he was blind, and deaf, and it was a slagging _miracle_ he wasn't dead.

Ratchet hunted through the sparking bundles of wiring, small shocks making his fingers twitch. He found the two ends of the severed energon conduit. Blue liquid covered his hands as he pinched them closed, dripping down his wrists and under the plating on his forearms. Arcee arrived with the nanites, and Smokescreen with the water; he sent them both back for more supplies, then got Bumblebee to staunch the bleeding while he temporarily sealed the wound, melting the edges of the plasfibre conduit back together.

It was a temporary fix, at risk of bursting open again at any moment – but it would keep Optimus alive that much longer.

The Last Prime made a small noise, half sigh and half whimper, cut through with static and wet coughing. A small databurst arrived in Ratchet's inbox, callsigned 'Optimus'.

It simply said, :: _Will I survive?_ ::

"Yes," Ratchet said immediately. Then mentally smacked himself. :: _Yes, you will._ ::

He had no idea how he'd repair this sort of damage with the tools which he had, but yes, Optimus would survive. In what state, was the real question.

Optimus' hand slid up his arm, hesitantly tracing its way over his shoulder and up his neck, cupping the side of his helm. Ratchet tipped his head into the gesture, humbled all over again by the way Optimus constantly thought of others even when facing such dire circumstances himself.

:: _I need you stay as still as possible_ :: he sent, motioning to Bulkhead to tip Optimus' helm backwards. :: _I'm going to detach what's left of your lower jaw and cut the protoform back to the undamaged layers. I'm sorry, but we don't have any painkiller chips strong enough to deal with damage on this level._ :: Were he any other mech, Ratchet might have been able to route the pain data through his stress systems and bleed it off in a less agonizing manner, but Optimus' systems were specialised and Ratchet was a surgeon, not a medical programmer. :: _How are your energon levels?_ ::

Optimus' hand dropped to his shoulder and clenched tight. ::_ I understand. My energon levels are low – not quite in the red, but very close._ ::

Ratchet waved Arcee over – small hands for fiddly work, and besides, she had the most advanced first aid training.

"I need you to run a transfusion," he said, handing her the line and bag. "On my lower back, just under the upper dorsal plate edge, there's a large vein. Insert the needle, hold the bag up high, lean it on me if you have to. I am a fully-framed medic; I can spare it more than any of you can."

Smokescreen had, for once, used his processor for something other than mischief. He'd brought a selection of the cotton towels Ratchet had begun using for soft cleaning implements along with the tub of hot water. Energon melted synthetic fibres, but cotton soaked up everything, and was markedly less abrasive than the metalthread cloths they'd brought from Cybertron.

Ratchet took one, carefully packing it into the cavity between Optimus' upper left jaw (what was left of it, Primus) and the inner lining of his cheek. There were two minor conduits damaged here; he simply cauterized both ends, again a temporary measure. Another towel dabbed away the spilled energon. Lacerated strips of protomass hung from the roof of Optimus' mouth. He swapped towel for scalpel and cut them away, depositing them in a clean steel bowl.

The fortunate thing about protomass was that it could be induced to grow outside of its native frame. It took delicate care, of course, and there were long odds on whether he could provide that care with the resources that they had – the alternative being a much greater risk that, provided he _could_ tool new components for Optimus, the Prime's own frame wouldn't accept the implants.

Gradually he stripped the left side of Optimus' mouth back to both upper jaw strut mountings. Investigation revealed that the lower jaw's joint was largely undamaged despite the dislocation. He cut the strut loose from the mounting stays as close to the joint as was possible, then pinned the protomass up beneath the ragged edge of Optimus' cheek lining and severed the hanging portion of his jaws.

Ratchet wondered for a moment what sort of weapon was capable of inflicting this sort of damage. There was one major incisive wound, which implied a sword or some sort of blade. The secondary damage, however, the shattered struts and the roughly-torn soft metalmass; that was more like blunt force trauma. He turned the remnants of Optimus' jaw over in his hands, cutting the external microplating loose from the protomass lining. The internal strut was formed of two lengths joined together in the middle by a partially fused joint. Like all warframe-descended models, Optimus' jaw had enough give in that joint to prevent break under high impact force; it wouldn't just snap in any old brawl. Yet –his jaw had broken, not just at that point but in three other places. Slivers of his dente peeked out of swollen, weeping protomass.

Optimus' vents wheezed and gurgled. "Tip him forward again," Ratchet ordered Bulkhead. "Slowly, gently."

He carefully pressed the flayed flap of microplating hanging from Optimus' right suborbital ridge away from the opening of his cheek vent, finding the point where it clung on and cutting it away. Optimus was going to have hardly any face left at this rate; it was all going to be hanging around in Ratchet's Petri dishes.

The upper row of dente had been damaged just as badly as the lower – if not worse; the grinding tops had been shattered and probably driven right out of his mouth, but the roots had been forced further up into the mounting struts. They'd require surgical extraction later, once Ratchet got Optimus up onto a proper berth.

He barely noticed it as Arcee pulled out the transfusion needle and patched his vein. "Done," she said, tipping the bag upside down and back again to prevent the energon from settling. "What do I do now?"

"Wait for a moment," Ratchet said, wiping fresh streels of oral fluids and energon from Optimus' gaping intake. Damage to the intakes made mecha drool, base coding serving a twofold purpose: to prevent excess dryness from hindering the healing process, and to provide rudimentary cooling to the sensitive intake interior.

Ordinarily, one had a glossa with which to swallow the excess away.

"All right. Bulkhead, sit back, rest him against your chassis. Keep his back as straight as possible, take the weight of his helm with your hand and be very careful about it. Arcee, take his right arm and hold it out at ninety degrees from his side. There's a big vein just underneath the joint in his armpit - that's the one we want. It's the same process: insert the needle, hold the bag up high and let it drain naturally."

"Right."

Arcee did so. Optimus went limp in their hands, trusting them utterly. Even at the sting of the needle he didn't so much as twitch. Ratchet patted his thigh, silently reassuring.

There was an odd scent in the air. Ratchet looked up, past Smokescreen and Bumblebee where they hovered nervously overlooking the proceedings. On the mezzanine, Raf huddled miserably on the couch, flanked by Jack and June. His face shone with clammy sweat, his hair mussed and his glasses on the table two yards away. There was a bowl on the floor in front of him.

Ratchet frowned. "Are you feeling unwell, Rafael?"

The boy's brown eyes shifted over to him, then fluttered shut. He took a deep breath, nodded, very very faintly.

June answered for him. "We're all a bit queasy, I think." She looked at Jack, who grimaced, and Fowler, who had just peeked over the edge of the mezzanine and clearly regretted doing so.

"I'm all good," Miko chirped. She'd draped herself over the railing and watched intently as they attended to Optimus, seemingly unaffected by the gruesome nature of his injuries barring a deep wince as Ratchet sealed a sparking line deep in the back of his patient's oral cavity. "Is Optimus going to be okay?"

"Time will tell," he told her. "He's certainly going to live. That's all I can say for sure at this moment. If any of you are feeling sick, I doubt the proximity to energon fumes will help. Bumblebee, you and Smokescreen should take them up to the roof for a while. There is a cool northeasterly wind today; it may help."

There was a pause, while Bumblebee looked at Smokescreen, no doubt comming each other furiously. Both mechs' expressions were reluctant, but Bumblebee, as expected, recognised the necessity. Since Raf's near-death at the hands of Megatron and subsequent adventure with the tornado, the young scout had thrown himself into research of the care and raising of human children, the better to defend his tiny charge from harm. It was almost cute, really.

"Right, will do," Smokescreen sighed. "Just give us a call if anything comes up, okay?"

Ratchet made a noncommittal noise, recognising the silent plea in the kid's voice. Times like these, he knew that despite the greenhorn's cocky mannerisms, Smokescreen really did just want to help.

He busied himself fixing up the torn ends of muscle cables and protomass fibres that had once joined Optimus' lower jaw to his neck.

Where to from here, that was the question.


	2. Chapter 2

Short update, sort of a filler. Status update for Opti, if you will. You know the working title for this fic was 'Yowch'?

I might or might not have taken some inspiration for this fic, along with the originally-mentioned wildlife doco, from the immortal soldiers in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

* * *

BEHIND MASKS

Three days later and he still didn't quite know the answer.

Optimus was alive, if not exactly _well._ He'd recharged for one and a half of the first two days, the remaining half a day spent under surgical anaesthesia while Ratchet operated on him. His systems kept trying to go into delayed shock. While Ratchet had thus far been able to stave them off, stress-induced shutdown was far from what Optimus needed.

He'd woken, at last, earlier this morning.

His sensory track had yet to repair itself. He'd now been deprived of sight, sound and proximity for close to sixty-eight hours. Ratchet had confined him to berth rest for all of that time, though he'd eventually had to detach Optimus' damaged leg at the knee just to get him to stay put. (This meant that he could drench it in nanite gel without the itch bothering Optimus, a grudgingly-acknowledged plus.)

There was not a lot he could do about the nightmarishly gaping hole in Optimus' face. The wound wept, constantly; his fluid drains had been casualty along with everything else. Ratchet had several tubes draining excess fluid from Optimus' protoform while he tried to figure out how best to repair what needed it and replace everything else.

Upon more detailed inspection he had discovered a great deal more invisible damage to Optimus' underlying helm structure. Optical fluid had flooded the back of one orbit, pushing the mechanisms forward; he'd found that out when the optic in question began one evening to bulge grotesquely out of its socket. Primus, he'd never dealt well with optics!

Fortunately he'd been able to thread a tube in beneath the optic and drain the fluid. It didn't seem to have come back yet. He'd run a scan when it had happened, but had not been able to find any indication of where a leak of that size might have come from.

Optimus himself did not seem as bothered by his situation as Ratchet might have had reason to guess. He had been up and attempting to walk within hours – despite Ratchet's repeated urgings to stay still, fraggitall! Fortunately he hadn't gone far; the record attempt was halfway across the medbay in ten minutes, hands carefully outstretched, navigating along the edges of Ratchet's workbench by touch and memory alone. He'd confessed to Ratchet via databurst that the attempt had made him feel woozy, his injured leg aching so fiercely that the stream of damage reports, processed in the same centers as his spatial processing subroutines, had overloaded just about everything in that center and dumped him squarely on his aft.

A sure sign that he shouldn't be up at all, Ratchet had snarked.

The message seemed to have sunk in. Primus take this slagging self-sacrificing martyr of a Prime! (Except if he ever tried, Ratchet would fight him every step of the way.)

Today, or rather, this afternoon, they were alone in the medbay. Optimus sat with his back to the wall, helm dropped back and sightless optics raised to the ceiling.

Ratchet was working on fashioning a mask for him, so that when his leg healed and his sensory center came back online he could walk around the base without sending everyone else scurrying from the room. The sight of his gaping maw was almost enough to unsettle Ratchet – and as an old field medic he had seen far more than his fair share of gruesome wounds! There was just something about the way Optimus' face just… _ended_ right below his expressive optics that set Ratchet's nerves on edge. Empathy too made his own jaw ache.

It was the same for most of the others: Bulkhead, Arcee, Fowler, Jack and Raf avoided looking straight at Optimus at all, while Smokescreen, Bumblebee and Miko seemed not to be able to look away. June was the one exception; after the initial shock she seemed to have filed it away as unimportant. As a medic herself, albeit a human one, Ratchet figured she likely had her own experiences to go on.

Optimus' old battlemask provided a useful template. Ratchet hadn't managed to salvage the mask itself, but he had blueprints, and plenty of spare material lying around. The prototype he was currently tinkering with was made up of the same sheets of alloy which had formed the skin of the shuttle in which they had arrived on Earth.

That shuttle was long gone, scrapped and recycled to augment the base in which they lived. Its skeleton, however, lived on in every Autobot on Earth.

He drummed his fingers against the bench, wondering. The prototype sat on the worktop in front of him, outwardly unremarkable. It contrived to give the appearance of a jawline and chin, mesh packing behind the face of the mask shielding what on Optimus was raw and weeping protoform. The packing left room beneath his chin through which to thread the drains and give him a greater range of movement. Ratchet was probably going to have to surgically fit the later versions, if the prototype run went well.

He turned and crossed over to Optimus' berth, sending a quick databurst. :: _Optimus? How are you?_ ::

Optimus blinked, his helm turning automatically to find Ratchet. :: _I am well._ :: His field reached out, warm with affection and gratitude.

Ratchet sat down on the edge of the berth, lifting Optimus' hand and placing it on his leg to give him some spatial direction. Optimus squeezed his thigh in a silent thankyou.

He checked the drains, wiping away a ring of dried lubricants from around the ragged edge of Optimus' throat. ::_ I have something I would like to try, if you're up for it._ ::

:: _What is it?_ ::

:: _A mask of sorts, based on your old one. I hope it will protect you from the elements should you need to venture outdoors before your injury is properly healed. _::

:: _I see._ :: Optimus had 'seen' the full extent of his damage, Ratchet had sent him an image file the moment he tried to pull the 'I don't feel that bad' card. :: _That certainly could be useful. What will you need to do to test it?_ ::

:: _Well, I need to figure out a way for you to wear it – if there is any discomfort you must tell me immediately – and for long enough that we can be sure it works the way it is intended to._ :: He unpinned the drains, organising them in a bundle at Optimus' throat. :: _It may also disguise the full extent of your injuries. I already have several volunteers to assist with judging that._ ::

Optimus' field swirled with good humour, bright and summer-warm. :: _I am relieved to hear that. I certainly see how my injuries might be quite disturbing to look at._ ::

Ratchet pushed back, grinning. ::_ I'm used to treating wounds like this, but no-one else here is. Well, Nurse Darby, perhaps._ ::

::_ Only to be expected; human medicine is certainly more gruesome than ours._ :: Optimus said it as though he believed it. Ratchet debated educating him, but decided to show mercy.

::_ You are exceeding our expectations. I can't believe how lucky you are._ ::

Optimus rested his helm back against the wall with a faint clank. :: _How so?_ ::

:: _You weren't standing half a step or so closer to whatever hit you, for example. Had you, we likely would not be having this conversation. An inch further, and you would have lost your entire vocaliser rather than just the data track. Your optics are not damaged. You did not bleed out before we could get you a transfusion. That is how lucky you are._ ::

:: _An Insecticon_ ::

Ratchet blinked up at him. :: _What?_ ::

:: _An Insecticon, with a rather… interesting arm mod. It resembled claws, but joined to the hand at the knuckles rather than the digit tips._ :: There was a drip making its way down the column of Optimus' neck. He raised his servo and wiped it away. :: _Retractable. They don't often attempt to punch. I made a severe miscalculation._ ::

:: _I don't believe that's native Insecticon tech._ _Knock Out, likely. Primus, that mech has a lot to answer for._ ::

:: _Indeed_ :: Optimus said. He shifted, gathering his legs under himself and rocking from side to side as unobtrusively as any mech his size could have managed. :: _Do we ourselves not, however? I will count myself lucky that I was spared to fight another battle. _::

Ratchet curled his lip. :: _I hate that you must fight in the first place. I hate waiting for you to come back like this, or worse._ ::

Optimus' sightless optics focused uncannily on him. He wrapped his EM field around Ratchet, close and soothing. His hands slid up Ratchet's body to his waist, cupping the small of his back and gently tugging him into Optimus' lap. Up close he stank of solvent and nanite gel, but his closeness was precious and Ratchet found himself pressing his face against the plane of his chest. Optimus obligingly shifted his windshields aside so that Ratchet could feel the humming of his spark, alive and well, beneath the seam of his chest.

Proximity made the vents catch in Ratchet's fans. Relief made his spark spin tight, his circuits heating. He'd been able to save Optimus this time.

This time, his skill had been enough.


	3. Chapter 3

_Just a short update, some sweet sweet fluff to give you cavities. it leads into a bigger chapter that hopefully should be coming pretty soon, depending on if rains this weekend. If it doesn't, I'm going camping. If it does, I'll write all day._

* * *

**BEHIND MASKS**

…

The proximity alarm roused Ratchet from a deep recharge cycle. He was up and standing before his optics had flickered on, drowsily reaching for the alarm controls through his HUD.

The alarm was a simple extra security measure designed to alert them should any Decepticon signatures be registered within two hundred miles of the outpost. The wide range meant there were many false alarms, but two hundred miles gave them around twenty minutes' warning in the event of a hypothetical attack. It was peace of mind, and that was priceless at this stage of the war.

Large servos hesitantly touched his back.

Of course, Ratchet thought, after the initial startlement had faded away. He reached down, enfolding one of Optimus' servos in his own. The Prime's questing touches grew in confidence, his free hand sliding to Ratchet's waist.

A week after the fact, Optimus was healing steadily. His hearing had returned yesterday; the alarm must have woken him as well.

"No trouble," Ratchet told him aloud. "It looks like a flight of Eradicons running a patrol over New Mexico. The Nemesis must be over North America."

:: _We may have to go to radio silence _:: Optimus observed.

Ratchet nodded distractedly, observing the five Eradicon signatures as they veered south just shy of the state border.

They were in Optimus' quarters, making use of the largest berth in the base. After five days confined to the medbay, Optimus had grown so restless that Ratchet had given up keeping him there. Fortunately by that stage the fractures in Optimus' radial strut had healed sufficiently that he was able to reattach it. After a few hours to allow self-repair to strengthen the joint couplings, he was able to walk down the hallway to his room under his own power.

He had had to have Ratchet there to stop him from walking into walls and low-slung pipes, his sight having not yet returned.

This at least was deliberate; Ratchet wanted to make absolutely certain that the impact damage to his orbital structure had healed before he attempted to switch them back on. Optics were made up of some exceedingly fiddly and easily-damaged components. They also had a tendency to raise prickles on the neural net at the back of Ratchet's neck. He didn't like the way they… stared.

Once they'd made it all the way down the hall without incident, Optimus had talked Ratchet into staying with him overnight. In the privacy of his own mind, Ratchet had justified it by convincing himself that his presence was needed in case Optimus took a turn for the worse.

The reality was that Optimus' near-death experience had scared him half to death. He was loath to so much as glance away, certain rogue subprocessors in the back of his mind terrified that Optimus might keel over while he wasn't looking.

_Get a hold over yourself,_ Ratchet scolded himself._ You're not a newbuild and you know that he's not going to disappear on you._

The steady pressure of Optimus' arms looped around his waist grounded him. Since Optimus had lost his sight, he had become a great deal more tactile. This had not come as a surprise; many blinded mecha sought to learn as much as they could about their environments via their other senses, and touch had always been an important secondary mode of communication for Optimus. He seldom indulged it these days. Ratchet hadn't realised how much he had missed it until now.

Ratchet turned around, rubbing the corners of his optics. Optimus drew back a little, giving him room to maneuver without letting go of him entirely.

He was wearing his mask. He couldn't not wear his mask, in fact, since Ratchet had surgically welded it to the bottom of his cheek struts. Aside from the draining tubes that emptied out of the bottom of the mask and the unlit optics, he looked almost normal.

"Well," Ratchet said, sighing through his vents. "Good morning, old friend."

:: _Good morning, Ratchet_ :: Optimus replied. :: _What shall we do today?_ ::

Ratchet shrugged. "I have a few ideas. Can you stand up on your own, or would you like my help?"

::_ As long as my balance holds, I should be able to do it myself._ :: Optimus slid his pedes over the side of the berth, planting them solidly on the floor and shuffling himself forward. He stood in one movement and rested his servo on Ratchet's shoulder for a moment while he found his equilibrium.

"Looking good so far," Ratchet commented. "Is there any pain in either knee or strut?"

:: _A little residual ache in the knee. I am not receiving any damage reports out of the ordinary, however. _::

"That's fairly normal with the sort of wounds you sustained. How is your proximity today?"

::_ Functioning at acceptable parameters._ :: Optimus demonstrated this by placing both servos on either side of Ratchet's helm and bending to press their foreheads together. Ratchet's olfactory sensors measured the telltale scent of oils and oral lubricant behind Optimus' mask.

"Showoff," Ratchet sniffed.

Optimus traced the curve of his mouth with a thumb, and his field swelled with affection when he realised what the expression was. :: _Of course. It is my responsibility to impress upon my medic the extent of my faculties._ ::

"Sweet-talker," Ratchet added to the list of his complaints. "Let's see how far those faculties extend. I think you can lead me out into the control room today."

Optimus stepped back, offering Ratchet his servo. :: _I realise I say this often, but thank you for your help, old friend. I appreciate it a great deal._ ::

Ratchet took it. "I know you do."

They moved toward the door, and the day began.


End file.
